Every day I deal with challenges large and small, and so does everyone else ...

Thursday, October 12, 2006

the israeli public school system

Working with a school system with a limited budget and too many needs, we're finding that helping our young son feel good about himself and school is probably one of our biggest challenges. (The biggest challenge by far is a livelihood. If money was no object we'd have more options for our son.)

I'm looking for creative ways to work within the system to help him fit in his own way instead of being forced to be the square peg he is not and cannot be.

Some of the ideas we are tossing around:

Find some sort of "kosher" way for him to walk out of class. This requires a supervised place for him to go, and something enticing and constructive for him to do. The getting him out of class is not so tough. It's the "supervised" part that's hard.

There is a boy in the 6th grade who has a great connection with our son. They really enjoy each others company. The boy is not a strong student, but he's really really good and SENSITIVE. Quite amazing in an 11 year old boy. I wonder if there would be a way to set up some sort of paired study between them.

We have a friend-and-neighbor who is a retired school principal. She'd be happy to volunteer to work with our son on a regular basis. The question is, what would they do together?

I'd like to get him into Karate (really Judo) but he'd rather do basketball. Oh well.

I'm also looking for resources in HEBREW to give to his teachers. There are seven boys in the class with attention deficit disorder in some for or another and the teachers have their hands full in keeping order, so when our son gets up and walks out I'm sure that in some ways it's a relief.